Chapter Text
Take a chance we can dance up in mid-air
Feel so good, I could die, but I don't care
Walk slow and low on a tightrope
Hope it lasts but you know, you never know
~LP~
Lisbon had lost their discussion, her eyes flicking up towards the ceiling as a soft smile blossomed. More Than Words by Extreme pipped onto the dancefloor and her breathing moved in sync with the melody. “Oh, God. I used to love this song.” Lisbon admits.
“Loved the song,” Jane echoes, caught up in watching her. Lisbon has the most expressive face, making her both easier to read but also a delight to simply watch.
A flood of memories play out behind her eyes, lips flipping through an assortment of smiles, each with slightly different meanings. “I used to love this song.”
“You love this song.”
“Yeah.”
“Obviously, you want to dance,” Jane attempts.
The pleasure washes from her face. “With you? No.”
Her aversion to the idea only urges him onward. “Oh, come on.” He offers, waiting until her disgust is replaced by something more contemplative. “You can pretend that I’m that mean, cold-hearted guy that you used to worship from afar, but never talked to.”
She fights the battle, her evident pleasure in the music competing with, well something else. The song wins out. She lifts her hand, but her gaze flashes a warning. “No funny stuff.”
“Really?” He teases only to watch her reaction, to distract from what would happen next. From the feel of her small hand disappearing within his, the warmth of her back unhidden even by layers of silk and wool, in great contrast to the slight chill in her fingers. Her hand warms within his, skin was softer than had imagined. Lotion. She smells sweet but tart, pomegranate. It was not a perfume as he’d first surmised, but a lotion that had warmed along with her, adding an earthy undertone uniquely hers.
He had an urge to sneak his palm beneath her blazer, beneath the silk of her blouse to see if her back was as soft as her hands. Did she tend to only those places for public consumption, hands and face, calves and forearms, or did she lather the entirety of her body in the slightly tangy scent. He considers each potential ritual in turn, her hands at her back, at her waist, trailing upward—
His body responds in kind.
And he recognizes that he’d made an error in judgement.
He just likes to touch her. A hand at her back, an arm threaded through hers, an impromptu hug, but none of those lingered. This lingered.
“Trumpet,” he says, anchoring himself to their earlier conversation so his mind cannot wander.
“No.”
She had settled closer, or maybe he had pulled her closer. A treacherous hand or a sway? The effect was the same. There was almost no space left, but not close enough to fall in synch. Her feet move a half beat apart from his. It could have been clumsy, laughable, but his attention is elsewhere. At the brush of her breasts back and forth across his chest. He can feel their size, their weight, their shape without attempting to.
“French horn?” he asks then coughs, covering the baritone sneaking into his voice.
Lisbon leans closer, laying her head neatly on his shoulder. Her eyes close.
He thanks spirits he does not believe in that she cannot see the colour of his neck.
“No.”
“Oboe?”
“No.” Her voice is soft. Too soft. Like the touch of her palm.
He tries to hear the notes of the song, but they are distant beneath the noise of his body. He tries to focus on the lyrics but can only hope the song is nearing its end, that there is still hope for a tactful retreat.
Then she sighs in pure delight.
His eyes widen as everything within him tightens, running quickly through his rolodex of tricks and ending up empty. No, not empty. Aroused. Still aroused despite counting backwards from twenty-five, reciting Latin idioms and reviewing the declaration of independence. He is still aroused. And worse than that, he is hard enough to betray himself.
He angles his hips backward, sharply, throwing off the easy balance between them.
Lisbon lifts her head from his shoulders, presses her shoulders backward as a question forms on her lips, very obviously finding the answer in what he had hoped to hide.
Traitorous appendage.
Her gaze dances up to the ceiling, cheeks pinking but she does not run away. Neither does she chastise him or cause a scene. She only inches slowly back.
“Is that a violation of the funny stuff rule?” Jane babbles.
Her eyes face his reluctantly, sharing ownership of an embarrassment that should have been solely his. “I just assumed you were going for the full sophomoric experience.”
The chuckle was low, guttural, and entirely beyond his control. Surely there ought to have been a lecture, but instead she only rolls her eyes. Rolls her eyes and then glances around the room.
“What are you looking for?” Jane asks.
“Father Brown and his ruler, his lecture to remind us to leave room for the Jesus.”
He laughs again, easier once Lisbon joins in his chuckle. The last chords of the song die away, and she waves him away from the dancefloor, her composure never cracking.
She was truly astonishing.
Caring too. She makes no mention of his faux pau as they split a bottle of wine, debriefing the case in their own private way, with verbal jabs and words games, but without never ever dancing close to the jugular of his attraction.
Lisbon decides that the dance had been a terrible idea, along with the two glasses of wine that had followed. Except two glasses were never enough for her to lose her composure. She was dignified, she was in control, but she was also staring at her consultant with something akin to lust.
Okay, not something akin to. Just lust full stop.
She had slid her jacket off as he’d hailed a cab, the silk of her blouse already clinging to her back. Jane had cracked the window as they sat, the heat of the evening barely lulled by the light breeze ruffling his curls. The top two buttons of his shirt were undone, slight sheen of perspiration holding her focus her more than it ought.
She drags her eyes back to the cityscape before he can read her thoughts. The lights pass in a blur as she slightly alters her original ponder. Could two glasses of wine be an excuse for the bad decision she very much wanted to make?
She shakes her head, but it can’t entirely clear the images that continue to flash by. So, she presses her knees together and lowers her window the whole way, losing herself in the sounds of the city and all the reasons why Jane got excited that had nothing to do with her.
His wife had died years ago and, based on her observations, he’d lived like a monk ever since. At least he’d ignored or outright rejected the lures thrown his way, despite being far from inept in capturing the interest of the opposite sex. The man was a talented flirt; a skill he’d made use of when needed to push an investigation forward. But he was still a man. It was one thing to flirt from a distance. It was another thing to have a woman drape themselves all over him as Lisbon had done. She winced. This was more her fault than his.
That thought is more effective than a cold shower, and she clings to it as the cab slows, as they move together to the hotel. The silence in the elevator is uncomfortable but not as deeply as it might have been. The bell chimes their floor, their rooms at opposite ends of the floor.
“Thank you, Teresa,” Jane offers as they moved to part. “For allowing me to preserve my dignity.”
“No problem. I mean It’s been a long time since you wife died, and I haven’t seen you hanging off anyone, it’s only natural that—”
His brow creases. “Don’t do that.”
Do what? Pointing out the obvious? Bringing up his wife? She cringes. That was the mistake, her mouth had run forward before her thinking had caught up.
“Don’t insult yourself in that way. You’re a beautiful woman.”
Her thoughts jump off their string. She waits for him to laugh, to state that he was teasing her, but he doesn’t. He only stares with such intensity that her body warms in reply. She swallows. This is just Jane. He enjoys putting others on edge, is provoking as a hobby. Then his eyes dip to her lips and her stomach bottoms out. “Are you attracted to me?” The question is hesitant. She hardly considered it before the words spilled out.
“There isn’t a man alive—”
“I did not ask that. I asked whether you were attracted to me.” She stretches to her full height, a half foot below him, but enough to challenge.
“Didn’t my little performance this evening—”
“God, Jane. I really need you to be serious, just this once.”
He does not answer immediately. She could almost see the gears turning behind his sea-blue eyes, which was a strange feat in and of itself. She had caught him off guard. Usually, she was dropped into his plots already half completed, always fully mapped out. So maybe this wasn’t a plot, or a tease, or a joke.
“Of course I am attracted to you,” he promises with so much sincerity that her reply chases ahead of her instinct.
“Enough to play pretend a little longer?”
His eyes round, but the hint of a smile breaks below. She awaits his teasing refusal, counts the beats to keep from fainting from pure embarrassment. But his smile climbs higher. “Your room or mine?”
“Yours,” she says automatically. His eyes narrow and she understands that he knows the reasons for her choice. She wants to be able to leave at a whim.
He offers a hand that she stares at rather than takes, even when Jane promises that the rest of their team are on different floors. She steps past him, then realizes that she only knows the vague direction of his room. And avoiding his hand provides little protection. His palm goes to her back, inching below the wool of her jacket, warmth burning through the silk of her blouse. He directs her down the sprawling hall, releasing her only to snake that hand into his jacket and retrieve the room card.
Jane kicks his shoes off as they enter. More domesticated than he ought to be. He leaves her wavering at the entrance, back to her as he unbuttons his jacket and tosses it over the back of the room’s only chair. She drags her eyes away, choosing to study the room rather than the man.
The hotel room is what she would expect, a mirror to her own but with a few touches that mark it as Jane’s territory. A book lies on the side table, opened partway and turned over to hold its place. There is a box of tea near the coffee set, Jane obviously not trusting what would be on offer here. He had brought three suits, the other two pressed and still hanging in the closet.
She feels a tug and her jacket is relinquished to him. He tosses it atop his own, the picture enough to do uncomfortable things to her insides.
The door shuts next, Jane reclining against her escape with a satisfied smile. He would move if she asked him to. She has no doubt, and that kernel of trust pops as he smiles wider, pushing off to move closer. He draws near enough that she understands his scent has changed through the day. In the morning there had been top notes of citrus and rosemary, but his cologne had transformed to something earthier, the low notes cedar and musk. It’s a classic sort of scent, almost historical, and it suits him as well as the brown leather derby shoes.
“Can I kiss you?”
No, no, no, no! Her instincts scream but she nods.
And maybe he recognizes her confusion for, rather than claiming her lips, he veers to the right, placing a light kiss on her neck directly beneath one ear. “Your pulse is racing,” he whispers.
He waits. He gives her space to admit her fear, but she is more transfixed by how deep his eyes appear beneath the low light of the room’s sole lamp. Then he grabs her hand and lays it above his chest, so she can feel his heart’s matching riot. “I am nervous too.”
This what not at all what she expected. This is not panting and grasping and body parts as she’d imagined when she’d made the offer. He holds her chin between his hands, palms large enough that she could drown between them, that she is already drowning beneath him and he hasn’t even touched her yet, not really. It’s that damned magnetic energy he exudes with each smile, between his steps, in his wordplay. Orbiting around her, drawing her progressively closer by sheer charisma.
Fuck it!
She inches onto her toes to kiss him first, arching her back as she uses two fists to yank at his collar, to collapse the height difference enough for what she wants. His hands move to her back, to anchor, to assist, to simply hold as he presses tight, his body a solid weight upon which she can rest.
His little friend greets her again, final proof that earlier had been no mistake. A chuckle builds deep inside, and she breaks their kiss before she laughs into his mouth. Whether from amusement or embarrassment is hard to decipher. And she has no grand desire to weigh the options.
Not once she feels the chill upon her back and realizes that Jane had untucked her blouse without her even noticing. Damned magician. He arches a brow, lifts the silk a few inches further before waiting for permission. She leans back and the silk wafts over her head in one motion, drifting to the floor behind.
“Wow!” he promises with so much sincerity that she nearly forgets she’s wearing a full-coverage t-shirt bra in the exhilarating colour of beige. The only nods to femininity a floral lace border. It’s proof that she had not anticipated this, had instead guessed she’d been chasing a perp before the end of the day, or the man beside her. It was usually a coin toss.
She ought not feel beautiful, but his gaze doesn’t allow anything else. As he helps her kick her pants aside, then uses their joined hand to force a small pirouette. “If you ever grow bored of being a Special Agent, Calvin Klein could use you as an underwear model.”
“There’s no need to lay it on so thick,” she counters. “I’m already in your room.” His brow creases again, same as it had a half hour earlier, and her delight is traded for a blush. On instinct her arms move to cross, to cover a little of what had been exposed, but he doesn’t allow the modesty, catching her hands with his own, keeping them at each side.
“Take the compliment,” he insists. “You are beautiful.”
Her head shakes lightly but the words still take purchase. How could they not when paired with a look of such sincerity? “This is hardly fair,” she detours with a pointed look at him. “Turnabout is fair.”
He chuckles. His smile does dip, his gaze doesn’t break with hers as he unbuttons his vest, slides it off his shoulders with an enthusiasm that is uniquely him. He rocks slightly from foot to foot as those fingers unweave the buttons of his shirt, filling the small space between them the warmth of his body and a deepening scent of cedar and something uniquely him.
He is fit for a man who spends a portion of each day reclined on a couch, whose only definition of cardio begins with and ends with running from danger. His shirt joins her on the floor, and she measures the width of his shoulders with her fingertips, the way his chest slops into his hips, the slight dusting of light hair that makes him even more real.
“Turnabout?” he repeats, bouncing on the balls of his feet, his smile childishly hopeful.
Is he actually expecting a compliment? “You already know that you’re gorgeous.”
He doesn’t deny it, only leans a little closer. “Does that mean I am pleasing to you?”
“That remains to be seen.”
It is invitation enough. He lunches forward, wraps his arms about her ass, and lifts her clear from the floor. She is dropped on the bed behind, has hardly found her bearings before he’s on top of her, his weight delicious as it presses her into the mattress below, hands and mouth everywhere at once. The expression of passion she had expected at the start. At least until her bra and panties join the rest of her clothing on the floor beside, until she is completely stripped bare for his examination.
He is a quick study, as she always imagined he would be. He would have to be a selfish man to not use his mentalist abilities to track his partner’s pleasure. And Jane is a selfish man in many ways, but not in this. Smug. Arrogant. Yes, but not selfish. His hands map her body, his hands and mouth colouring the boundaries he uncovers. He becomes languid in his movements, and her initial instinct is to hurry him along, but he sways her without a word. It is in his worshiping gaze and the novelty of his concentration dedicated to this particular task.
His brow arches as his finger slips inside, proof of just how pleasing he is to her. “Looks like I got my answer,” Jane whispers.
She really wants to slap him, but his face is quickly beyond her reach and where it goes, well she hopes he has to sleep in the wet spot later. It is, after all, entirely his fault.
He runs hand through his curls as he presses her knees further apart. The sight of that. The picture of his cheeky mouth being put to better use, it’s nearly enough to get her off in and of itself. Then he traces her opening with his tongue, an acrobatic tongue it would seem as he flicks and licks and does thing that no proper man should know how to do. Of course he’s good at eating her out. He’s good at every fucking thing. Bastard.
She tries to close her eyes, to focus on the movement of his lips, on the fingers that follow, the pressure building low in her stomach, but truth is she wants to watch him. Amusement plays in his light eyes as she presses her elbows below her, anchoring her for the show. He has to stop a moment because his smile wins, He presses his lips tight together, kisses the inside of either thigh. Of course, the man would be an exhibitionist.
No fucking shame.
She shuts her eyes on principle, throwing her head back to the bed.
He bites one thigh before his mouth returns to her core and she decides his lack of shame is a very good thing indeed.
Her hips buck instinctively and he lays one arm across her, holding her firm to the mattress, firmly to him. She tries to manage her breathing, calm and steady, but her chest moves contrary to her commands. She pants, she gasps, she loses herself as her thighs clench, squeezing him tight. A second finger joins the first, curling until she moans despite herself. He’s unlocked another secret and he wastes no time in exploiting his new knowledge, until she losses track of time, of the room, of the man who is the cause of everything.
Her body bucks again, harder, and then everything dissolves into white.
She feels him shift, crawl up the bed to lie beside her. She feels him anchor himself on one side, but it is all background noise to the bliss that radiates from every pore. She keeps her eyes shut, lets the roar dampen to a muted hum, doesn’t dare look to her partner until her body rediscovers herself, until its sunk deep into the hotel mattress.
Then she waits for the comment. For a quip that doesn’t come.
Her eyes finally open reluctantly. She wills herself to look beside and what she finds there quickly steals that nerve away again.
Patrick Jane is happy. Not amused. Not playing a joy that doesn’t quite sit right in his shoulders. Those shoulders are relaxed and his smiles don’t sit only on the surface. He is comfortable. His finger traces lazy circles around her navel, occasional kisses at her shoulder for no clear reason. Except his eyes pretend a reason. His look is soft, even as his hardness presses into one hip, still trapped within his dress pants. Contentment radiates off him in waves, but it is her whose toes are still curled, entire body still softly vibrating with the echoes of pleasure. And that is dangerous. Because Patrick Jane is a con man and, in that moment, with that look, he could easily con her into believing he was in love. And fuck it if her heart did not lurch in a way it absolutely could not.
She changes the rules they’d never decided on. He will not be inside her. Not now. Not ever. Whatever she had offered from the outset had drifted so far off its axis that it genuinely scares her. If she crosses that final boundary, then she’s pretty sure there was no coming back. He’s already likely slotted away her orgasm face in his memory palace. Embarrassment pricks up her spine and the rest of her happiness ghosts away.
And he senses the shift. His easy joy traded for a look that questions.
Fuck it. They were not going to have that conversation.
So, she bats away his hand as she sits up beside him, hands going straight for his belt buckle, the following button and zipper not enough to land on her target, not while he’s still half reclined. She uses a sharp nod of her head to betray her interest.
“So demanding,” Jane teases but he still shuffles to the end of the bed, stands and drops his pants in one fluid movement.
He has no idea.
Because she grew up in a Catholic school, where the girls passed along advice to one another that wasn’t found in any Biology textbook. She might not have been as practiced but, she slips down his boxers and decides that it’s just like riding a horse. Not that she’s ever ridden a horse.
Jane puts a hand to the bed beside as she swallows him in one movement, moans as her hands coming up to cup his balls. His mouth opens as if to make a comment. She can guess the words.
I did not expect— How did—
She much prefers the silence. She can study him in the quiet, examine how his breath turns ragged and his body sways. Even without a memory palace, this was an image she would not forget, his eyes dark with need, lips parted and breaths shortening by the moment. There is a slight discomfort too. He is a man used to being fully in control. And the loosening of those reins, the whimper that escapes between his lips, is a delight to witness.
He pulls back slightly but she moves with him. “Lis—Teresa. I am going to.”
She breaks her progress only long enough to whisper. “I know.”
She knows the exact moment, as his stomach grows taunt, and his legs shudder as he filles her mouth. She feels his legs go to jelly, directs his still-shaking body to sit on the edge of the bed. Then it’s his turn to look away as a blush crawls up his neck.
“Okay, okay. A little humiliating,” he allows. “I did not expect that.”
“Catholic loophole,” Lisbon explains and he laughs, despite the bright pink of his cheeks, his laugh is easy and deep. His hand finds hers and he inches her closer, lets his eyes drift back to the pillows in invitation.
Of course he is a cuddler.
She parts his thighs to draw flush, wanting to take one final snapshot of his blonde curls slightly darker at the root from sweat, his shoulders slumped in relaxation, his smile genuine and full. She leans down to kiss one temple and he turns his face to try to prolong the contact. “I’m going to go back to my room now.”
His disappointment is plain, but she suspects it will transform to a very contrary feeling in the morning, as he recognizes that he’s betrayed his dead wife for a bit of fun. And she’d rather not wake up as a witness to that. She gathers up her clothing, wiggling back into her jeans though she’d much rather lie back on the bed beside him, the remnants of pleasure exhausting every inch of her body.
She still leaves.